Carré

prof.dr. S.M. García Blanco (Sonia)

Full Professor
TNW-ANP-IOS
Carré C4617
s.m.garciablanco@utwente.nl
+31534896104
Business card

I started my career by studying Ingeniería Superior de Telecomunicación at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (1999). I carried out my MSc thesis work at the Ion Lab at the IBM Almaden research center, in Almaden, California, and, after completing my PhD at the University of Glasgow (2003) and my post-doc at the University of Toronto (2003-2005), I worked for five years at the Institute National d'Optique (INO) in Québec City, Canada on wafer-level hermetic vacuum packaging of microbolometer detectors, advanced packaging and silicon micro-bench technology. I joined the University of Twente in 2010 and I am currently leading the Integrated Optical Systems (IOS) group, where we develop novel materials and integration technologies for Integrated Photonics. 

I am also the co-founder and CEO of Aluvia Photonics B.V., a start-up company spun-off from the IOS group to offer foundry services of photonics integrated circuits (PICs) operating down to ultraviolet wavelengths in our proprietary aluminum oxide (Al2O3) technology.

I am the mother of two amazing kids, Marco (9) and Elena (7), who give relevance to all that I do, and married to a very supportive husband. I love long-distance running and I am giving my first steps in the world of triathlon.

Expertise

  • Material Science

    • Waveguide
    • Amplifier
    • Tungstate
    • Al2O3
    • Silicon Nitride
    • Laser

  • Physics

    • Earth
    • Ion

Organisations

Ancillary activities

  • Aluvia Photonics B.V.Spin-off Aluvia Photonics

Publications

2025

Widely tunable and narrow-linewidth violet lasers enabled by UV-transparent materials (2025)Nature communications, 16(1). Article 10294 . Franken, C. A. A., Hendriks, W. A. P. M., Winkler, L. V., do Nascimento Jr., A. R., van Rees, A., Dijkstra, M., Mardani, S., Kienzler, D., Dekker, R., van Kerkhof, J., van der Slot, P. J. M., García-Blanco, S. M. & Boller, K.-J.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65211-2A fully integrated ion trap with a single layer of Al2O3 nanophotonics supporting light delivery from UV-NIR (2025)EPJ Web of Conferences , 335. Article 03003. Grimpe, C. F., Du, G., Salahshoori, F., Jordan, E., De Goede, M., García-Blanco, S. M. & Mehlstäubler, T. E.https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202533503003Watt level continuous-wave laser in silicon photonics (2025)APL Photonics, 10(8). Article 086109. Singh, N., Wang, K., Garcia-Blanco, S. M. & Kärtner, F. X.https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0271250Thulium-Doped Al2O3Waveguide Amplifiers Fabricated via Radio Frequency Reactive Co-Sputtering (2025)In Conference Proceedings - 2025 25th Anniversary International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks, ICTON 2025 (International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks). IEEE. Wang, K., Martinez, C. O., Lorenzen, J., Dijkstra, M., Jongebloed, B., Singh, N., Kartner, F. X. & Garcia-Blanco, S. M.https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTON67126.2025.11125480Enhancing microcomb efficiency via pump recycling in a chip-integrated gain medium (2025)In 2025 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe and European Quantum Electronics Conference, CLEO/Europe-EQEC 2025. IEEE. Gaafar, M. A., Ruhnke, B., Wildi, T., Ludwig, M., Ulanov, A., Voumard, T., Wang, K., Sinobad, M., Lorenzen, J., Francis, H., Carreira, J., Geiselmann, M., Singh, N., Kärtner, F. X., Garcia-Blanco, S. M. & Herr, T.https://doi.org/10.1109/CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC65582.2025.11110140Broadband Packaged Erbium-Doped Polycrystalline Al2O3 Waveguide Amplifier with 24 dB External Net Gain (2025)Optics express, 33(14), 28985-28994. Osornio-Martinez, C. E., Bonneville, D. B., Dijkstra, M., Do Nascimento, A. R. & García-Blanco, S. M.https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.562635Free-Space Characterization Setup for Low-Loss UV-261nm Waveguides in Aluminum Oxide (2025)[Working paper › Preprint]. ArXiv.org. Voskerchyan, V., Hendriks, W. & Blanco, S. G.https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.13227Monolithically integrated erbium-doped polycrystalline Al2O3 waveguide amplifier on silicon photonics platform (2025)Optics express, 33(11), 23491-23502. Osornio-Martinez, C. E., Bonneville, D. B., Hegeman, I., Dijkstra, M., Segondat, Q., Dekker, R. & García-Blanco, S. M.https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.562888Scalable erbium-doped waveguide amplifier with external fiber-to-fiber gain using reactively sputtered polycrystalline aluminium oxide (2025)Optics express, 33(11), 22458-22468. Osornio-Martinez, C. E., Bonneville, D. B., Dijkstra, M. & García-Blanco, S. M.https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.558707800Gbps/λ WDM Metro-Access Network by novel photonic integrated EDWA and SOA-based WSS Nodes (2025)In Optical Fiber Communication Conference in Proceedings Optical Fiber Communication Conference, OFC 2025 and Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) Postdeadline Papers 2025. Optical Society of America. Xia, S., Osornio-Martinez, C. E., Bonneville, D. B., Zheng, B., Raz, O., García-Blanco, S. M. & Calabretta, N.https://doi.org/10.1364/OFC.2025.Th4C.4

Research profiles

Affiliated study programs

Courses academic year 2025/2026

Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.

Courses academic year 2024/2025

Address

University of Twente

Carré (building no. 15), room C4617
Hallenweg 23
7522 NH Enschede
Netherlands

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